The Aeneid
John Dryden (1697)
Virgil's Aeneid (composed c. 29–19 BCE and left unfinished at his death) is the great national epic of Rome, recounting in twelve books the wanderings of the Trojan hero Aeneas from the ruins of Troy to Italy, where his descendants are destined to found the Roman race. Written in the age of Augustus, it weaves Homeric epic together with a profound meditation on duty, empire, and the cost of destiny. This is John Dryden's celebrated 1697 translation into English heroic couplets, long the most admired rendering of the poem in English.
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